The prompt is a rather expanded question today:
What’s your learning style? Do you prefer learning in a
group and in an interactive setting? Or one-on-one? Do you
retain information best through lectures, or visuals, or simply
by reading books?
In general, I do my best learning when I can see something.
And I do my worst learning by relying solely on hearing.
When I say that I am a visual learner, I don’t mean that I need pictures of things, necessarily. I can easily remember things if I have seen them in print, but I have a tough time remembering things I have only heard.
If I read a piece of sheet music, I can often remember it by pulling up an image of it in my mind’s eye. But if I try to learn some music by ear, I have a terrible time retaining it. Like, if I’ve seen an intro to a worship song printed out, I can reliably remember it without having the music in front of me. But if I’ve never seen it written out, I will struggle to reliably play it.
If I read information in print, I can often remember it by visualizing the page where I saw the words printed. But if I just hear information, I feel like I have no way to retrieve it from my brain!
For instance, if I see someone’s name printed out, even once, I almost always will remember it. If just hear someone’s name, I will usually forget it until I get to know the person better.
When I think about a person, I often see their face and their spelled-out name in my mind’s eye. So maybe that’s why it helps if I see someone’s name printed out!
I also remember where things are on a printed page, or on a page of my notes. So when I am taking a test at school, I often visualize a page of my notes, a page from my textbook, or a diagram.
Incidentally, I love to think about the ways that different people learn and remember things. I used to think that everyone thought/learned/visualized the same way, and once I learned that wasn’t true, I became very interested in learning about how other people think!
So, tell me! How do you learn? How do you remember things?
(And do any of you visualize someone’s name when you think about them?)
Here, unlike on your books post today, I can agree with you wholeheartedly. Give me a book and leave me alone. I am such an non-audio learner that I can’t even listen to audio books.
And I can visualize where on a page I’ve read something, too.
Definitely by seeing and even better, by doing. If I’m just told what to do, I forget it quickly. I visualize printed pages, too, and used to do well in spelling bees in our classroom because I just called up a picture in my brain of the typed word from the spelling book page, then read it off, letter by letter. Writing it down also helps me learn, and I write many notes to this day.
Years ago, I stumbled upon an example of different styles. Back then, for five days a week I babysat my niece who is a week younger than my daughter, and I used flash cards and the ABC song to help them learn their ABC’s. My daughter could recognize every letter on the flash cards, but couldn’t sing the song without lots of help. My niece knew the song well and sang it easily, but struggled with recognizing any letters on the flash cards. They both did well in school and have good careers, so it appears that the learning style doesn’t affect success.
I’m definitely a visual learner. I have such a difficult time attending to audio things. My dear husband and I enjoy reading in the evening. He will often read an interesting tidbit aloud to me, but more often than not, I have to stop him and take the book or magazine to read it with my own eyes so that I can understand it. This frustrates me because I feel like I’m ruining the moment when he’s wanting to share something with me.
Same as you- printed words, chart, picture. But I learned in a nursing class that the more of our five senses we use, the better, so seeing AND hearing AND touching would be good, depending, of course, on the subject. I can remember numbers by hearing them! Does this seem related to the synesthesia thing?
Oh my word, I am the WORST at remembering numbers after hearing them. They fall right out of my brain!
Synesthesia is more like…you might see certain numbers as a particular color, or a sound as a color. Or you might visualize letters or numbers in a certain spatial arrangement.
I definitely can see how a combo of using my senses helps me learn things like anatomy. I’m so grateful I get to go into class and use the models in person!
That’s so interesting that you can visualize the printed page. If I need to remember something, I write it down. The physical act of writing it cements it into my brain. If I need to recall something, my right hand twitches a little and I remember writing it down. I apparently passed this trait on to my younger son.
My oldest son learned my phone number quickly at age 4. I just set it to a tune and he could almost immediately sing it back. My youngest took much longer to memorize it. He can’t remember music at all (me neither!) He never learned the alphabet song either.
I finally had him write it out every day till he learned it. I keep being surprised when he takes after me.
I don’t know if it’s because I have a neurodivergent brain (ADHD) or some other reason, but I actually learn best using three methods equally-reading, writing (typing, actually since I have to be consciously aware of my keystrokes), and listening. I was probably in my first year back at college when a (stats) professor suggested recording the lectures to later re-listen to the material. It had never crossed my mind to do such a thing, but once I did (and gave it a shot), I was hooked. I tend to remember only some of the information through each method, so collectively, I retain considerably more material than any single approach.
Although, I also tend to forget numbers immediately. I chalk it up t “there is only so much room in my brain,” and so information pertaining to anything math-related is retained until the course is over.